Keratins, a family of fibrous structure proteins, are the key structural components of skin, hair, wools, nails, scales and feathers. Keratin polypeptides are insoluble and resistant to most proteases. Accumulation of insoluble keratins in the environment, mainly in the form of feathers and hair, becomes an issue in the solid waste management.
Keratins can be efficiently degraded by keratinases. Hence, keratinases find applications in biowaste process and also in detergent and leather industries where they serve as specialty enzymes to remove proteinaceous stains and hair, respectively. The applications can also be extended to wool and silk cleaning and medicine. Recently, keratinase has been used extensively to increase digestibility of proteins in animal feed.
Heat is often required in industrial applications to speed up reactions. The spray drying process of keratinase powder also requires heating. Hence, a heat-stable keratinase can be very useful in the industries.